GloSoilBio · The impact of multiple global change drivers on soil biodiversity

The impact of multiple global change drivers on soil biodiversity

The GloSoilBio project aims to understand how multiple simultaneous global changes may be impacting soil fauna communities across the globe. With an increase in human population, and the associated consumption, there has been an increase in the pressures that biodiversity faces. These pressures, such as changes in the climate, increase in the amounts or types of pollutants, or changes in how the land is used, amongst others, are often referred to as global changes. To date, most research, especially at larger scales, has been focussed on the impacts of each of these global changes individually. However, small scale studies often show that these global changes interact with each other, resulting in impacts on biodiversity than can’t be predicted from investigating the single global changes only. For example, biodiversity in areas of land that are already intensively used may be far more negatively impacted by a drought resulting from climate change, than biodiversity in pristine areas. Therefore, in the GloSoilBio project I have been studying how interactions of global changes influence biodiversity, with a focus on soil biodiversity. At large scales, most attention has been on plants and aboveground biodiversity, and only recently have large-scale analyses of soil biodiversity been completed. Despite the fact that soil biodiversity accounts for ~60% of global diversity, and is responsible for a large number of crucial ecosystem functions and services. These ecosystem functions and services can include capturing carbon, increasing water infiltration as well as increasing biomass production aboveground. Thus, understanding how soil biodiversity is responding to global changes that are increasing as a result of human population is important, in order to be able to conserve the organisms and the services they provide us. In GloSoilBio, I am focusing on soil fauna communities specifically as these are often not investigated when soil biodiversity is researched (as most research is conducted on the bacteria and fungi in the soil), but they still provide a host of ecosystem functions and services. The overall objectives of the GloSoilBio project to investigate how multiple simultaneous global changes influence soil biodiversity across large-scales. I am doing this in two ways, using (i) a meta-analysis approach (WP1) and (ii) a synthesis approach after amalgamating new data (WP3 & WP4). In addition, both space-for-time and time-series synthesis analyses are being used, to get a fuller picture of the change in soil biodiversity and to complement the benefits of each analysis.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз